The Poor are Hungry - and Dispirited

[Maxply]

And we have an obligation to care for them, despite their condition.

 

[mesquite_magic]

Can you go into more detail? I’m confused by the word “dispirited”. Does it mean depressed, or does it mean those w/out faith?

Kim

 

[Maxply]

Just the standard dictionary definition, meaning without much hope. It’s tough to be born without common advantages, even tougher to have to live with an entire “poverty industry” feeding off your tight straits (see May 21 Business Week; noted multibillionaire Chicago Pritzer family’s investment in the quickie loan outfits).

 

[Amolibri]

Hi Maxply,
[your phrase “despite their condition” made no sense to me.] I’d like to think it’s BECAUSE of their condition.:yup:

I offer this excerpt from Bill Gates’ address to the Harvard graduating class:

Imagine, just for the sake of discussion, that you had a few hours a week and a few dollars a month to donate to a cause – and you wanted to spend that time and money where it would have the greatest impact in saving and improving lives. Where would you spend it?

For Melinda and for me, the challenge is the same: how can we do the most good for the greatest number with the resources we have.

During our discussions on this question, Melinda and I read an article about the millions of children who were dying every year in poor countries from diseases that we had long ago made harmless in this country. Measles, malaria, pneumonia, hepatitis B, yellow fever. One disease I had never even heard of, rotavirus, was killing half a million kids each year – none of them in the United States.

We were shocked. We had just assumed that if millions of children were dying and they could be saved, the world would make it a priority to discover and deliver the medicines to save them. But it did not. For under a dollar, there were interventions that could save lives that just weren’t being delivered.

If you believe that every life has equal value, it’s revolting to learn
that some lives are seen as worth saving and others are not. We said to ourselves: “This can’t be true. But if it is true, it deserves to be the priority of our giving.”

So we began our work in the same way anyone here would begin it. We asked: “How could the world let these children die?”

The answer is simple, and harsh. The market did not reward saving the lives of these children, and governments did not subsidize it. So the children died because their mothers and their fathers had no power in the market and no voice in the system.

But you and I have both.

 

[Maxply]

I think what’s interesting to me is that we’ve all heard so often that getting an education will simply do what it takes to eliminate poverty.

To a great extent, this is true. However, prior to a boy or girl getting an education there needs to be education-supportive values surrounding him or her. This is why, for example, some minorities are doing very well for themselves, on their own stick, in America.

I think the libertarian economists haven’t talked much about moral intangibles such as hope. I think our most mired minorities generally lack this, and it becomes a brutal self-fulfilling prophecy of failure.

I also think in economics talk generally, and even on this board, there is a lot of Horatio Alger talk, and undue optimism that merit will be rewarded justly in the marketplace. Interesting that on a guitar forum recently, a guy noted that he was rich enough to buy upper end guitars mostly due to luck in a certain situation! (We hardly like to think of our millionaires as being lucky!).